Sunday, February 22, 2009

Warriors Steal OKC's Thunder

The Warriors effort in the second half was enough to get past the league's most turnover prone team, the lowly Thunder. The Warriors owed the Thunder some payback after the last meeting when Jeff Green's buzzer beating prayer was answered giving the his team a dramatic one point win. This Oklahoma City basketball team stole our Thunder in another way by taking away the rights to our creepy. yet energetic mascot.

As the Warriors pulled away in the second half, I was pleased to see the grins wiped from the cocky young faces of Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, and Russell Westbrook. The talented young Thunder team got a bit too comfortable in the early goings and benefited off some bad calls against the Warriors. Don Nelson picked up a technical after Maggette was hit on the elbow by Nenad Kristic attempting a high speed transition lay-up. No foul was called allowing Kevin Durant an easy fast break dunk, infuriating Nelson and Oracle Arena. Later in the contest, TV analyst Jim Barnett was shown standing up from behind the scorers table to share his opinion with one of the officials.

I was surprised coach Nelson chose not to start rookie Anthony Randolph, who has been playing his best basketball of his NBA career. The Warriors started to pull away with Randolph at center, Azubuike at four, Jackson at three, Crawford at two, and Ellis at one. The smallest, most sharp shooting lineup out ran the tired Oklahoma City starters.

I'm relieved the Warriors didn't make any trades. The whole point of this year is to see who is worth keeping around. Wait until the off season. The Warriors have more wings than Hooters, so I'm sure they could put together a nice package in exchange for a power forward, especially after the next draft.